Elliot considered. “I guess it could have been. He could have probably picked the locks without too much trouble.”
She looked up at him.
“Well, if I had to
choose
who went in there, Bud would be a good choice. He doesn’t really seem to say much of anything to anyone, does he?”
“No. He pretty much keeps to himself.”
“You have no idea how many times I wanted to call to make sure you were okay.”
Her eyes questioned him.
He twinkled a smile at her, his explanation cut off by a chorus of drunken rollicking in the yard. They looked over to the tables where Bobby and JJ had wrestled Petey into a huge white brassiere and were stuffing it full of black socks. Elliot grinned, but his face fell silent when he looked back at her and saw pain muffled behind her eyes.
“You okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. It’s just embarrassing.” She nodded toward Bobby, who had now stood up, lost his balance and collided with a shelf full of shoes.
“He’s just having fun. Don’t worry about it.”
“He’s drunk.”
“Hey, that’s him. It’s not a reflection on you.”
“Easy for you to say, you’re not married to him.”
Elliot laughed, squeezed her shoulders and winked.
“Quite true, I’m not. Hey, you want something? Can I get you a coffee?”
“Okay, sure. Thank you.”
“Cream or sugar?”
“Both. One sugar, please.”
“Perfect. Same as me.”
He stepped off the porch and crossed the yard, mingling with the old-timers as he passed by. She held the book in front of her as she watched him go, covering a smile that swallowed her face. She wanted to reach up and kiss the sky. Resting her head against the porch railing, she blurred all the sights and sounds of the auction into a steady, dull murmur as she waited for him to come back. The touch of his hands had not lost their magnetic draw and, as before, he’d left her with every light in the house on.
“Here you are. Whoops, spilled some.”
She let him place the foam cup into her hand then slid the tip of her tongue up the side of it, recovering the drip.
“Thank you. So, how was your trip?”
“My trip?”
“Yeah. This winter, where’d you go?”
“Did I go somewhere?”
Victoria looked at him curiously as she sipped her coffee. “Didn’t you? I heard you had.”
“Really? Where’d you hear I went?”
“I don’t remember. The Bahamas, Barbados. . . some place like that.”
Humor crossed with surprise mingled on Elliot’s face. “Interesting. Did you happen to hear if I had a good time as well?”
Victoria shook her head as she joined him in a laugh. “You know, I’d really like to know how these stories get started.”
“Probably just a misunderstanding. No harm done. Kind of funny actually.”
Victoria nibbled delicate teeth marks around the rim of her cup, pondering the avalanche of questions this small shift of information sent tumbling her way.
“So, you’ve been here all winter? In the valley?”
He nodded a smile, questioning her question with his eyes. “Well, I guess that’s not quite true. I spent a week at Christmas down on the island visiting my brother.”
“The island?”
“Ya. South end.”
Victoria smiled knowingly. “Oh, south end of the island. Now I know where that rumor came from.”
“You do?”
“Island. South. More than enough information to get a story started around here.”
“Come on! You’re joking!”
“Afraid not.”
“Doesn’t take much, hey?”
“Nope.”
“Things must get pretty twisted in a place like this.”
“Consider that a serious understatement. You wouldn’t believe the stories I’ve heard about myself.”
“And what. . . people just sort of believe whatever best suits them?”
“Pretty much.”
He paused to consider this, imprinting a happy face into the soft foam of his cup with his thumbnail. “Regardless of the truth?”
“If it works for them, ya.” She swished her coffee around and watched as it swirled into a slow eddy.
“Kind of like you?”
She felt her back stiffen as she bristled against the words. “What do you mean?”
“You know.”
“Do I?”
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure you do.” He sat on the step below her and leaned back against the porch railing, turned his cup toward her and pressed the happy face into a sad one. “Correct?”
She rolled her eyes and pushed lightly against his shoulder with her knee. “I wish I’d never even mentioned that. Don’t you ever forget anything?”
“Not if it’s important to me, no.”
“And me being happy is important to you?”
“Your being honest with yourself is important to me.”
“I am being honest!”
“How honest? Honest enough to admit you’re not being honest?”
She put her coffee down beside her, met his eyes and held fast. “I’m fine, Elliot.”
“Uh-huh. You’re the Queen of the Fine-Fine.”
Victoria laughed. “Okay. Fair enough. So, let’s say I’m that honest. Where would it get me?”
He set his coffee down beside hers and rested his hand lightly across her foot.
“Everyone has options, Victoria.”
“Really? So what are mine?”
“Don’t know. That’s something only you can decide.”
It wasn’t the answer she was hoping to hear and her body, her mood, even the air around them seemed to grow agitated.
“Well, maybe I’ve decided my options don’t look so good. What then?”
He squeezed her foot. “Well, maybe then you just need to look a little deeper. Try to see things from a different perspective.”
“Well, right now what my perspective sees is my husband and his friends staggering this way.”
“Is that a problem?”
“When Bobby’s drunk, everything is a problem.” She smiled as if it were a joke and shifted her leg away from Elliot’s arm.
“Should I leave?”
“Too late. It’ll look like you’re running away.”
Bobby knocked his way through the crowd, saw her sitting off by the house with Elliot and attempted to fix her with a damning stare as he made his way closer, but the interference of people and potholes and a gut full of booze made it all but impossible to maintain. Avoiding his eyes, Victoria examined her cup and concentrated on carving it full of nervous
Xs.
Looming up on her, he nudged her foot with his boot, focused his frown and spit into the lilac bush beside the stairs.
“How’d you git here?”
“In my car.”
“How the hell you git it started?”
“The key.”
“Bullshit! I got the frickin’ key.”
“Well, I got the frickin’ spare,” she jousted, feeling somewhat insular surrounded by the polite restrictions of social mores.
“That right? You thinking you’re pretty bloody smart, ain’t ya?”
She kept her head bowed, the foam cup slowly imploding inside her fist. “Hey! I’m talking to you!” He nudged her again harder and the cup collapsed completely, spilling the coffee over her hand and down her leg.
Elliot rose up beside her, the easy looseness gone from his limbs. “Hey Buddy, hold on there. Let’s just—”
“Keep your face outta where it don’t belong, pretty boy,” John Jr.’s voice warned with bitter amusement.
Wisely Elliot ignored him, touching Bobby’s arm, which was attempting to steady him against the rails. “Come on, Bobby. Everyone’s just having a good time. Let’s just—”
“Let’s just you mind your own friggin’ business how’s about!” He tried to square off with Elliot, but the step beneath him tottered under his weight and kept him off balance.
“Better watch that stair. Doesn’t seem too safe.” Elliot reached out to help steady him, but Bobby pushed his hand away, lost his balance and half-fell, half-sat beside Victoria. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tipped her toward him, the sweat of his underarms cold and rancid against her cheek.
“Bobby,” she whispered. “Let go. You’re hurting me.”
“That so?” he returned evenly as he fished a half-chugged mickey from his pocket, squeezing her tighter as he took a swallow.
“Drink?”
Elliot declined the offer, held his coffee up in defense. He tried to catch Victoria’s attention, but she kept her eyes riveted to the stair beneath her, mortified at having Bobby join their conversation, furious at finding herself trapped beneath his arm. But the situation reeked of explosive potential, and the mere thought of what might happen should Bobby be set off was enough to internalize her fury into shame.
“Heard ya was gone this winter.” Bobby mumbled the words and finished with a loud belch.
“Pardon?”
“Heard ya was gone. Where’d ya go?”
“Nowhere really. I just—”
“Heard ya went to Bally or somewhere.”
“Bali?”
“Ya. Where ’bouts is that anyways?”
“Well, it’s a part of Indo—”
“It’s part of India, you nitwit,” Petey volunteered.
“Not India you jackass! It’s just below Africa,” John Jr. cried decisively, the matter settled and Bali relocated. “What the hell you do down there all winter, anyhow?”
“Actually I wasn’t down there this winter. Haven’t been down there since I went with my brother, oh man, I guess almost ten years ago.”
“I heard ya was down there most the winter,” Bobby challenged as he took another guzzle.
“Hmm, well, not that I remember. I spent a few days on the island though.”
Bobby slapped his thigh. “That damn Ferguson. Pot-licker ain’t never got his stories straight. Watcha do on the island?”
“Stayed with my brother. Fished a bit.”
“You got a brother?”
“Yup. Two of them. This was my youngest one. The one I went to Bali with.”
Bobby glared up at him suspiciously, not too sure he wasn’t being played for a fool but eager to show himself up for the challenge.
“Thought you just bloody said you didn’t go there.”
“No. I said I did go there. With my brother. The one who lives on the island.”
“I just bloody asked you that and you just bloody said you didn’t.”
“Asked me what?” Elliot returned evenly, without a trace of emotion, so innocent in fact that Victoria had to look up and catch the devil in his eye to be sure he wasn’t.
“Asked you if ya went to friggin’ Bali this winter!” Bobby took an extended pull from his bottle in an attempt to clarify things.
Elliot shook his head. “Nope, not this year. Maybe next year I’ll get back down there. Hey, I need a coffee. Anyone else want one? Victoria, can I get you something?”
She slipped him a smile as she shook her head. Bobby, still confused scratched his.
“You bin lots of places?” John Jr.’s words ran across Peter’s just as he, not one to refuse a free anything, was on the verge of accepting a coffee.
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess I have.”
“Ever bin on one them safaris?”
“Couple times.”
“Git anything?”
“Just photos. Not really a hunter in the true sense of the—”
“Ever seen a lion?”
Elliot’s nod brought the boys closer around him. “Oh ya, lots of lions. One time we were going down this trail and—”
And he was off. Leading them down a sunburned trail, creating for them a mystical beauty that they could never, not even in their deepest dreams ever fully imagine. Victoria relaxed as Bobby’s arm slipped from her, and he and the boys dissolved into Elliot’s tale, slack-jawed and daze-eyed as schoolboys at story time.
So. He had been home for the winter. Or for most of it anyhow. She watched his lips play as he spoke, tried to imagine his voice traveling a static-filled line into her ear. It was possible, she conceded. But just as possible it may have been Sam or Mark or Billy Bassman, for that matter. The voice had offered her little in the way of clues. And what purpose would there be for Elliot to hide behind anonymity? He seemed to have no problem speaking to her directly, perhaps even a little more directly than she appreciated. Then again, maybe Rose was right. People could not always be accounted for. Sometimes they did strange things. She searched Elliot’s face, turned and found Sam doing the same to hers. Embarrassed, they both looked away quickly, he back to Elliot’s oracle and she back to the sale.
The pressure cooker was on the block now, and the right to its title was brewing into an all-out war. Mrs. Lyn-croft and her twin sister, Hilda, deadly competitive since they’d fallen in puppy love with the same boy in sixth grade, had both set their hearts on owning the heavy silver pot. Pearl, having arrived at the sale earlier than either of them, felt by rights the pot belonged to her. Unwittingly underestimating the powers of twinship, she set about warning them off of it and unintentionally combined their efforts against her instead.